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Tara Cariaso
She /Her

Educator/Mask-Maker/Director

Tara is a Filipina-American, Baltimore-based educator of physical theatre, archetypes, somatic acting, mask performance, and is founder/designer for Waxing Moon Masks Education and Fabrication Company. Tara received her MFA from Dell’Arte Int'l School of Physical Theatre, and has been part time faculty at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), CCBC, and Guest Artist at the Pig Iron school in Philadelphia. Her ongoing work with non-profit B4 Youth Theatre uses somatic practices and theatrical masks for social justice play-making in Liberia, West Africa. Tara is in collaboration with Faction of Fools (DC),imagining an anti-oppressive Commedia Dell'Arte framework, and her framework, “Embodying Archetypes,” imagines liberated character creation processes for a next generation of comic actors.

A person in a commedia dell'arte mask poses for a photo.
Essay

The Harm of Teaching Commedia dell’arte to Contemporary Players

7 October 2024

Teaching commedia dell’arte to theatre students can be a powerful way for them to gain useful skills. But it can also cause great harm. In this essay, Tara Cariaso explains the potential harms inherent to the form, and the need to reimagine commedia to create stories centered on joy, justice, and liberation.

Three actors in brightly colored clothing and masks perform outside.
Essay

Commedia Gets a New Face

14 December 2023

Mask maker Tara Cariaso details her process for creating new masks for Commedia dell’arte, alongside a pedagogy that removes the harmful stereotypes originally embedded in the form and creates space for more actor agency. 

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